Amy Corbin is Professor of Media & Communications and Film Studies at Muhlenberg College, where she teaches courses on introductory film analysis, film history, African American film, Native American film, the genre of melodrama, and films about travel. She is also an affiliate faculty member of the Africana Studies and American Studies programs. Dr. Corbin specializes in the representation of race and cultural difference in American film, and is specifically interested in how these differences are symbolized by places and geographical relationships like travel. Her book, Cinematic Geographies and Multicultural Spectatorship in America, demonstrates the way that iconic American places—Native American lands, the inner city, the South, and the suburbs—were used in popular film to express a growing interest in multiculturalism during the post-civil rights era. She has published numerous essays that integrate her interests in film and geography, the works of independent filmmakers of color, and American cultural studies. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., is the Senior Director of Education at Renew Theaters, an organization he is very proud to join after over 20 years at Bryn Mawr Film Institute.

At BMFI, Andrew was the founding director of education, having started at that organization in July 2005, four months after its opening. In the subsequent two decades, he built and grew one of the earliest and most comprehensive film studies curricula found at any of the hundreds of independent theaters across the U.S. To date, that program has educated over 20,000 people through more than 400 distinct seminars and courses, and numerous theaters around the country have learned from and been inspired by it to bring film studies to their own communities.

In 2019, Andrew became Senior Director of Education and Administration when his role expanded to include management of BMFI’s communication and special programming efforts, as well. In 2022, he became Deputy Director and his duties expanded further to include the supervision of the directors and managers responsible for communication, donor engagement, education, membership, and programming.

Andrew earned his B.A. from Brandeis University, where he majored in American Studies and completed the Film Studies and Journalism Programs. He spent the next year in New York City, working as a film critic, before heading to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he earned his M.A. in Communication Studies. Following a position there as a visiting lecturer, Andrew went to Northwestern University, where he received a Ph.D. from the Department of Radio/Television/Film. His areas of focus were American film history, film theory, and genre theory.

In addition to teaching at UNC and Northwestern, Andrew has been a visiting assistant professor at Whitman College in Washington and a member of the adjunct faculty at Dominican University outside of Chicago. Locally, he was a lecturer in the Department of English at Cabrini University and in the Film Studies Program at Ursinus College.

Andrew has presented papers at the annual conferences of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the International Association of Media and History, and has given presentations about film education at the Art House Convergence, for which he was the co-chair of the education track from 2017-2019. In addition, he has written for The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, The Business History Review, The Journal of American History, Film International, and Jump Cut, has discussed film during several radio and television appearances, and has been interviewed for articles in Film Comment, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, and other publications.

Andrew has spoken at a number of institutions of higher education, including Bryn Mawr College, Penn State, Muhlenberg College, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University. He has also been invited to give talks before a number of Philadelphia’s artistic and cultural organizations, including the Violette de Mazia Foundation, the Philadelphia Theatre Company, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. In addition, he has taught classes in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Andrew greatly enjoys the films of Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher, David Mamet, and Michael Mann, and counts among his all-time favorites The Awful Truth (1937), Strangers on a Train (1951), The Untouchables (1987), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Fugitive (1993), and The Social Network (2010). He has held a real Oscar, been used as an excuse for his grandmother to meet Robert Redford, and was dressed down by Harrison Ford, whom Andrew still thinks is America’s greatest living leading man.

Paul McEwan is a professor of Media & Communication and Film Studies at Muhlenberg College. He is the author of Cinema’s Original Sin: D.W. Griffith, American Racism, and the Rise of Film Culture, The Birth of a Nation (BFI Classics), and the co-editor of In the Shadow of The Birth of a Nation: Racism, Reception, Resistance. His research also includes published work on Canadian cinema and film pedagogy. He teaches courses in film history and production, from silent cinema to screenwriting.

He has years of experience teaching outside of colleges, and has led dozens of public discussions of classic films in environments as varied as schools, community theaters, and jails. In all of these environments, he is fascinated by the range of experiences that people can bring to their interpretations of cinema.

Paul Wright earned his B.A. from Northwestern University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in Comparative Literature. A cultural historian and lifelong student of narrative in all its incarnations, he has taught at Princeton, Osaka University in Japan, and Villanova University, among others. He currently teaches at Main Line Classical Academy in Bryn Mawr, PA.

Paul has presented at conferences and in classrooms around the world on subjects ranging from Renaissance studies to media studies and the role of games and play in historical understanding. His wide-ranging interests continue to inform his teaching, research, and publications. He is currently completing a book on Machiavelli, as well as an article on the surprising intersections and dissonances between Augustine, Shakespeare, and director Akira Kurosawa. He is also a board game designer with an upcoming game on Machiavelli’s Italy.

Paul has taught media courses at various institutions on a host of subjects, including ground-breaking American television series such as The Wire and The Sopranos, as well as genres such as film noir. He has also taught the films of directing giants like Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, Akira Kurosawa, and Paul Thomas Anderson. Paul enjoys helping students at any age see the connections between visual media and other arenas, including literature, philosophy, and history.